Results UX Leadership Workshop

at Mensch und Computer Conference 4th of September 2022 in Darmstadt (D)

 

EUXL Articles

 
 

The UX Leaders we need

The following article was written with the intention of taking up and answering a question that came up at Workshop #1 of the European UX Leadership Network in March 2021 and that has continued to occupy us, its initiators, in the aftermath. This is the question of what the profile of the ideal and correspondingly successful UX Leader should look like in view of its multi-layered and complex challenges…

 
 

EUXL Workshop #1 March 2020- Results

The European UX Leadership Network was founded in March 2020 by Christian Hauri (Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching), Hannes Unger (KnowGravity),Hendrik von Spreckelsen and Eddie Rich in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. It pursues the ambitious goal of significantly increasing the overall influence of user experience thinking in business by building a Europe-wide network of UX leaders.

On March 4 and 5, 2021, 22 UX leaders from different companies (D + CH) participated in the first UX Leadership Workshop of the European UX Leadership Network. The facilitators Christian Hauri (Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching) and Hannes Unger (KnowGravity) guided the participants through the two intensive and inspiring days. A total of 5 speakers held lightning talks on absolute key topics of UX Leadership, each of which formed the prelude to topic-related workshops.

 

EUXL Workshop #1

4th and 5th of march 2021

Goals

  • Determine the skills and experiences which UX Leaders do need to succeed in their organizations.

  • Analyse and understand how to tackle participants real world cases

  • Learn how to develop and implement a UX Strategy and UX KPIs properly with regard to participants real world cases.

  • Learn how to develop an UX Organisation and integrate UX practices and processes into an existing organisation and culture

  • Build the foundations of our network and start to help each other grow.

Speakers & Facilitators

Marcel Altherr Partner Palladio Trusted Advisors

Bernhard von Allmen Chief Usability Engineer Roche Diagnostics (Rotkreuz CH)

Daniel Boos UX Lead SBB (Bern CH)

Markus Flückiger Principal UX Consultant Zühlke Engineering AG (Schlieren CH)

Henning Brau Lead Corporate UX Strategist BSH Home Appliances (Munich, Germany)

Hannes Unger UX Senior Designer and Architect, KnowGravity Inc. (Zurich CH)

Christian Hauri UX Coach & Strategist Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching GmbH (Zurich CH)

Results of the workshop

Our first workshop was successfully held at the beginning of march 2021. Here is a documentation of the results:

The European UX Leadership Network was founded in March 2020 by Christian Hauri (Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching), Hannes Unger (KnowGravity),Hendrik von Spreckelsen and Eddie Rich in Lenzerheide, Switzerland. It pursues the ambitious goal of significantly increasing the overall influence of user experience thinking in business by building an Europe-wide network of UX leaders.

On March 4 and 5, 2021, 22 UX leaders from different companies (D + CH) participated in the first UX Leadership Workshop of the European UX Leadership Network. The facilitators Christian Hauri (Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching) and Hannes Unger (KnowGravity) guided the participants through the two intensive and inspiring days. A total of 5 speakers held lightning talks on absolute key topics of UX Leadership, each of which formed the prelude to topic-related workshops.

In accordance with the principles of the EUXL Network "no bullshit, real-life content" in the first part of the event the UX Leaders exchanged the status of their own companies with regard to the development of UX. It quickly became clear that despite the heterogeneity of the companies represented in terms of size and industries, many of them face similar challenges. For example, the resources of UX specialists are often not sufficient to meet the demand in the company. In addition to the operational work in digital product development, there is too little time and energy to systematically develop the maturity of the UX organisation. The institutionalisation efforts with regard to processes, standards and culture development are also often slow and friction-ridden. The very lively exchange revealed the common horizon of experience, showed that there is a need for discussion and action, and motivated a joint search for solution strategies.

Insights from the talks

Markus Flückiger showed that a UX leader needs different skills than a UX designer. For example, he must be able to understand business models and master C-level communication. The ability to develop strategies and tactics to move his company, to think and act user-centric must be accompanied by the ability to form and inspire interdisciplinary teams.

In Henning Brau's talk, it became clear that UX must become a value-adding part within the business strategy. This first answers the question of WHY. The selection and application of an appropriate UX maturity model shows where we are and what we have to do to reach the next maturity level. Then we need a UX strategy that defines how we will implement UX and manage the next step. UX products KPIs and customer journey KPIs help us measure success.

 
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Participants of the workshop#1

Participants of the workshop#1

Marcel Altherr demonstrated modern and agile leadership strategies and fueled the discussion why UX does not occur at C-level in many companies. In dynamic teams measures were then discussed and evaluated on how the UX mindset can be effectively and sustainably anchored at C-level.

Daniel Boos used the example of SBB to show how communities can be built up and maintained in the UX thematic environment, and what a promoting effect they can have on the UX culture of an organization. The work in the dynamic teams then focused primarily on the practice learnings from the example case and their applicability to the cases of the participants.

Bernhard von Allmen's talk "S-Curve - what do we need to scale UX?" illustrated the way to develop UX teams: First find the value that UX can create for the business, then set clear priorities within that. Based on this, we determine the core capabilities of our UX teams, define the way of working and KPIs, and lastly the tools and models we need to develop UX.

Feedback from the participants

In the retrospective of the workshop, the feedback from the participants ranged between high satisfaction and enthusiasm - especially the lively exchange and the exciting and high-quality talks received a very high appreciation. As a learning experience, we take with us that the work on individual cases needs more attention. We will take this into account when planning future workshops.

The two intensive, informative and inspiring days whetted the appetite for the next workshop, for which a collection of topics has already been jointly created. This follow-up workshop will probably take place in September 2021 - hopefully then together on site.

 
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Online Zoom-Conference,  22nd  of June 2021   6:00 - 8:30 PM

„UX Leadership Practice: UX Traps in companies - how to recognise and  handle them.“
- Talk by Stephanie Föhrenbach

As UX leader you are confronted with ideas that sound promising, but on closer inspection might have a snag to it. Wouldn’t it be great to have a dedicated UX research team and isn’t it desirable to base decisions on user tests? I will illustrate some unwanted effects of promising ideas that I observed in different companies. We then move on to a workshop where you can share your experience, discuss, analyse, maybe even discover more traps, and how we can avoid them.

Stephanie is a principal UX consultant & trainer at Zühlke, Switzerland. She works for clients from various industries and consults and supports them in user-centric development of software and products. She lectures and provides training on UX and requirements engineering at the university of applied science in Bern, at companies and international conferences. 

Extract from the talk of Stephanie Föhrenbach

Extract from the talk of Stephanie Föhrenbach

 

EUXL Workshop#4 May 2022 in Zurich

 

Program and Speakers

Leena Majaranta & Helen Jampen (Bern, Post CH):
Recruiting UX Specialists in a corporate context

Leena and Helen will show with one real life example what they learnt by recruiting UX Profs for Swiss Post where they lead a UX Team with 12 internal and 10 external UX Designers and Researchers. What are the pitfalls and success stories of recruiting and building a powerful UX Team.

Rainer Grau (Zurich Pragmatics Solutions):
How to survive in SAFe - And what about UX?

By default Ux plays a hard game in organizations to gain recognition and create value right from the beginning where product and service innovation starts. Investigating the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe - now a widely used approach to scale agility in organizations - again Ux is placed as beautifier on execution level in form of "customer centricity" and "design thinking".

In this session we will exchange, explore and discuss means and tricks to overcome this subordinate placement of Ux in SAFe. We are striving for a first citizen seat for Ux in product and service innovation.

Christian Hauri (Zurich, Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching) & Markus Flückiger (Zurich, Zuehlke Engineering) :
UX Orga - Patterns - Structures - Pitfalls and Success Stories - Orga Development and Improvement

Markus and Christian will give as insights about how to organise User Experience in a company. They identify different pattern and structures and analyse pro and con as well as a method to improve UX organizations.

Workshops in peer groups with topics from you work as a UX Leader

Leena Majaranta

Leena is an experienced UX leader with a history of working in various advertisement, E-Business and UX disciplines as a professional. Since 2014 her main activity is to evangelize and establish UX at the Swiss Post Ltd, where she leads a Team of UX professionals.

Helen Jampen

Helen lives and works in Bern as UX specialist at the Swiss Post Ltd. Originally a trained designer, she has studied Design Management International and Service Design at HSLU and worked as consultant. In addition, she runs her own business together with her partner.

Rainer Grau

Since over twenty years Rainer Grau engages to develop organizations. His driving vision is the competitive organization where employees like work because their job generates value and fun. He believes in continuous improvement integrating modern ideas and approaches in methodology, technology, architecture and organizational design thus evolving self-adapting systems.

Christian Hauri

Founder and Managing Director of Hauri Ergonomie & Coaching based in Zurich, Switzerland. He is teaching and implementing User Experience knowledge in companies for more than 25 years. He founded the European UX Leadership Network in 2020 and facilitated the EUXL workshops.

Markus Flückiger

Markus Flückiger is a UX Consultant working at Zühlke, Switzerland. He bridges the gap between users and technology in software and product development and consults clients in how to integrate UX in agile development. Markus lectures UX and requirements engineering at the university of applied science in Bern and is a member of council of the master in HCID at the HSR. Markus also co-wrote one handy book: ”UX and Usability Kompakt” and one a bit longer about the brain’s perspective on software engineering.